Monday, May 23, 2016

So, yesterday I was flipping channels and the recent remake/reboot/whatever of Vacation was starting on one of the array of HBO channels. The opening credit sequence is actually charming and funny; it's just Lindsay Buckingham's "Holiday Road" paired with authentic, hilarious family vacation photos (a few of which you've definitely seen online). It was kind of nice, and I watched the whole sequence.

It was nice.

Then the movie started.

We join Ed Helms (whom, turns out, I still despise on sight) as grown-up Rusty Griswold, now an airline pilot. After some hacky banter with his aged co-pilot, Rusty steps out into the cabin and tries to be the impressive captain in front of a boy. But, thanks to some turbulence, he ends up falling several times, in the process grabbing the boy's mother's breasts and ripping her shirt off, and finally face-planting directly into the boy's crotch in a serious of "hilarious" accidental incidents.

"STOP!" I yell and change the channel.

Stop.

Stop.

So... look, I've never intended to watch this movie in the first place and, based on this, I never will. I'm just mentioning it here because tuning out after a couple of minutes and then reviewing it as though I actually saw it seems intellectually dishonest.

But I had to get this out: seeing just that little bit of Vacation made me want to turn off the television, call Comcast and cancel my cable. disconnect my television, put it back in the box it came in, tape the box shut, and go drop it off at the Goodwill.

It made me feel like humankind's whole experiment with cinema should maybe just be ended.

It made me hate that we have the need to tell stories at all.

I'm... still weirdly angry about it.

Even after this weekend's traumatic episodes of Outlander and Game of Thrones, this is the thing that stands out from the last day.